This invention relates to improvements in apparatus for safely disposing of used hypodermic needles. More particularly, it relates to apparatus by which the resheathing of a used hypodermic needle is facilitated prior to collection, for example, in a sealed container.
After use, the tip of a hypodermic needle may bear a wide variety of diseases (e.g. hepatitis, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), etc.) which can be communicated to one who is accidentally pricked or stuck by it. So prevalent are such accidental "needle sticks", as they are commonly known in hospital parlance, that some estimates suggest that millions of dollars per year are spent in running blood tests following needle sticks to verify that a disease may have (or have not) been communicated, and to prophylactically treat potential disease if such tests are positive. This cost, of course, is reflected in increased medical bills to all of us.
Frequently, needle sticks occur while a nurse or medical technician attempts to return the used needle to its protective sheath prior to disposal. Such resheathing is considered by most to be an essential first step in the safe disposal of used needles. Unfortunately, resheathing a used needle has proven to be no simple task, especially when it must be performed under the pressures and time constraints common in busy hsopitals and medical practices. To obviate the need for resheathing, considerable effort has been expended in devising devices which dispose of needles without sheaths. Some such devices comprise containers which, upon receiving a needle through an aperture, strip the needle from its syringe faucet and retain it. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,351,434 issued to Elisha in 1982, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,067 issued to Schwarz in 1975. While such containers facilitate needle disposal for the immediate user, they can be costly to produce and consume considerable space. Furthermore, since the needles collected in such containers have no sheaths, they can present a substantial hazzard to the immediate user, especially when the container is nearly full and one attempts to jam more needles into it, as well as to those further down the needle disposal chain, e.g. refuse collectors, who ultimately dispose of the needles in an incinerator.
The most common type of blood-drawing needles have two juxtaposed needle elements, one being used to draw blood and the other being used to penetrate the septum of an evacuated tube (e.g., a "Vacutainer" tube, trademark of Becton-Dickinson) for the purpose of collecting the drawn blood. This type of hypodermic needle presents an even more difficult problem of safe disposal, especially so if both needle elements are to be resheathed prior to collection for disposal. To date, it is common to dispose of such needles, with or without sheaths, by merely dropping them in a sealed container. As noted above, unsheathed needles can present a health hazard to those who ultimately destroy the needles, and the task of resheathing both needle elements prior to disposal presents a substantial health hazard to those effecting the resheathing operation.